Output-Feedback Control for Path Following of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles via Singular Perturbation Technique

Abstract Autonomous underwater vehicles are needed in many applications such as underwater monitoring and surveillance, marine biology, rescue and search, undersea oil detection. In reality, the unknown external disturbances, and model uncertainties make the motion control of autonomous underwater vehicles a challenging task. With these issues, this paper presents an output-feedback singular perturbation control scheme for the path following of autonomous underwater vehicles, in term of the time scale decomposition method. As illustration, an extended state observer is first devised based on the singular perturbation theory. Then the stabilizing controller is developed by using the time scale decomposition method, in order to obtain a simple, easy-to-implement control law. And the stability analysis of stabilizing control system is conducted by constructing a composite Lyapunov function, which allows to provide mathematical bounds on the design parameters. Finally, simulation results are presented to prove the efficacy of the proposed controller for path following of autonomous underwater vehicles subject to internal and external disturbances.